Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [167]
Edward had begun to stride back and forth along the narrow platform with short, violent steps...a wooden music-stand got in his way, he kicked it aside with a deafening crash, then silence returned except for the ominous creaking of the boards under his weight. As he prowled back and forth his furious eyes remained on the faces of the young men on the dance floor.
Then one of the young men laughed. And at the same time a cold gust of wind blew through the open windows, swirling the curtains and fluttering the tablecloths, making the regiments of candles splutter and grow dim, sending up a blizzard of white petals from a wilted flower that lay beside a lady’s forgotten handbag. And then they were all laughing, rocking, hooting with merriment as they strolled unconcernedly towards the French windows. Outside on the terrace they could still be heard laughing as they moved away into the darkness.
Edward stopped pacing. His shoulders sagged and he looked ill. A minute or two passed and then the Major strolled across the floor and looked out over the terrace to make sure they had gone. He only saw a brief glitter in the darkness as an empty wine-bottle flew up from the terrace below, hung for a moment and then plummeted towards the glass roof. It smashed through the roof in a diamond rain and exploded on the floor in a thousand fragments. Edward, Sarah and the Major waited motionless. Presently from the glass roof there came another deafening crash and shower of glass, but this time the bottle dropped unbroken into the empty cushions of a sofa. And that was the end. It was only now that the Major noticed there had been somebody else in the ballroom all the time: sitting on another sofa in the darkest and most obscure corner holding hands were the racing motorist and his lady. But nobody acknowledged their presence and in due course they disappeared without a word.
“Where have you been?” demanded the Major bitterly. “And thanks for leaving me to cope with everything.”
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” Edward said curtly. Turning to Sarah he added: “I must take you home.” They left the Major standing resentfully amid the broken glass in the middle of the floor.
Unknown to the Major there still remained two Auxiliaries at the Majestic. After Charity’s fall the two young men who had been escorting them, the somewhat dubious Matthews and the clean-limbed Mortimer, winked at each other and hastened to assist the girls up the stairs. Charity needed this assistance; she had become extraordinarily sleepy and lethargic all of a sudden; she could hardly keep her eyes open or put one foot in front of the other. Faith, on the other hand, raced up the stairs unaided and even tugged at Mortimer’s sleeve (which made Matthews wonder whether his great experience of women, which had led him to choose the more intoxicated of the twins, had guided him to such a wise choice after all) whenever Mortimer, who had become strangely talkative, hung back to chat with his friend Matthews. The truth was that Mortimer, though determined to put the best possible face on it in front of Matthews (to whom he had once, in a moment of weakness, confided the description of one or two fictitious conquests), was distinctly alarmed by the turn events had taken and was secretly wondering just what he was in for...that is to say, he already knew more or less what he was in for, having had (or almost had) a thoroughly nauseating experience in a brothel in France, one of those “reserved for officers” (one shuddered to think what those reserved for the other ranks had been like). Even now, chatting garrulously on the stairs about Jack Hobbs hitting long-hops over the pavilion, he had only to close his eyes to see glittering-ringed fingers parting thick white curtains of fat to